A few weeks ago, my good friend Liz Posmyk posted this Magic Custard Cake that she’d seen on White on Rice Couple’s blog. When she saw their photos, she was reminded of the krémes sütemény her Hungarian mother had made for her when she was young.

I’ve seen quite a few blogs with magic custard cake and decided that I should try Lizzy’s recipe. She talks about her mother with such love and affection and every recipe of hers that I’ve made turned out so well.

When you make a recipe from another blogger, it’s not always straightforward. Some leave out an ingredient because they made the recipe up in their heads and then tried to remember what they’d done without remaking the recipe. Not so with this magic custard cake recipe. I arranged all the ingredients and then 1-2-3 it was in the pan and in the oven. Lizzy’s mother’s Hungarian custard cake was a real hit today.

The magic happens in the oven where the top layer is cake, the middle is custard and the bottom is umm… crusty-ish. This recipe gave me a chance to try out my new vanilla beans from Sunshine Vanilla – a local company which imports vanilla mainly from Madagascar and Tahiti and they ship worldwide. I’ve got beans, vanilla powder and vanilla bean seeds to practice with so I needed to choose which vanilla to use. I thought about using the wonderful pure vanilla powder but I didn’t want the custard to become discoloured so went with the beans.

I met Sonne from Sunshine Vanilla for coffee one morning recently and she gave me some samples to play with. The aroma of the Tahitian vanilla beans is out of this world and the pods are soft and full of seeds. They were perfect for this cake.

I urge you to try this custard cake and you’ll see that I wasn’t kidding about the magic.

Preheat oven to 165 C. Grease a 20cm (8-inch) square cake tin and line it with baking parchment.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then remove it from the heat and allow it to cool.

Add the milk and vanilla in a small in a small saucepan and place on medium heat until the milk is lukewarm. Remove from the heat and set aside (the milk needs to be warm but not hot).

Place the egg yolks with the icing sugar in a glass bowl and beat them with a hand mixer or rotary whisk, until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the melted butter and stir until well combined.

Fold the flour into the batter and slowly add the warm milk. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the egg whites and lemon juice or vinegar and beat until stiff peaks form.

Fold the egg whites, a little at a time, into the batter. The mixture will be runny and that's how you want it.

Pour the batter into your prepared cake tin and bake for around 50 minutes until the top of the cake is golden brown. Cover the top of the cake with a sheet of baking parchment if it is browning too quickly. You need to allow the baking time for the cake to 'set'. You will know the cake is ready to remove from the oven when there is a slight 'jiggle' when you gently shake the tin. If it's still quite runny, leave it for another ten minutes.

Remove the tin from the oven and allow the cake to cool, then place the pan into the refrigerator for an hour or two. This is important as the chilling time will give it the distinct layers the opportunity to 'set'.

Cut the cake into squares and dust it with icing sugar before serving. Store in an airtight container.